Alf has forgotten to buy himself a chocolate Easter egg again this year. He remembers only while he is cooking dinner. What reminds him is taking a real egg from the carton and noticing that it misses a seam. The memory of the seams in chocolate eggs comforts him. He used to relish the challenge of knocking an egg against a surface at just the right point and with just the right force to split it perfectly in two along the seam. Some eggs, the expensive ones with more chocolates inside, simply fell apart when you unwrapped the foil. This always disappointed him. Others had been melted together so enthusiastically by some machine that the chocolate along the seam was thicker than anywhere else and it was impossible to split them cleanly in half. He runs his fingertips over the smooth body of the real egg in his hand and, just before cracking it as usual against the edge of the saucepan, contemplates biting into its white shell, its two perfect halves melting in his mouth. As he stirs the yolk into his rice he has the taste of chocolate on his tongue.